Digg Dug —

Digg wants to fill the Google Reader-shaped hole in your heart

Company announces it is building a new RSS reader from scratch.

Digg revealed details about a forthcoming RSS reader in a blog post today. The service will perform much like Google Reader in that it will aggregate content from various feeds, but Digg said it also hopes to “add value to the sources of information” by integrating services like Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, reddit, and LinkedIn. The ultimate goal is to make all of these items easier to peruse and organize in an online reader. “We likely won’t get everything we want into [version one], but we believe it’s worth exploring,” wrote Digg.

The post also outlined how the company had long planned to build something like Reader, but it didn't actively pursue the idea until Google told the world about Reader's “imminent shutdown." Digg softly announced its own RSS intentions in a blog post last week, and an overwhelming number of responses encouraged the company's decision to push forward with the plan.

Digg said that although the project will be a huge undertaking for its small team, it’s confident it can ship a veritable replacement for Reader. Digg will work with its users to ensure that the product is up to their standards, and it invited those who are interested to join a mailing list as development begins. The company is also explicitly seeking developers who “want to lend a hand.”

There is no official word on when Digg’s new RSS reader will become available, but it will be interesting to see how the company continues to leverage Reader’s shutdown.

Florence Ion
Florence was a former Reviews Editor at Ars, with a focus on Android, gadgets, and essential gear. She received a degree in journalism from San Francisco State University and lives in the Bay Area.

Got used to Feedly now - it's not quite up there with Reader, and the Chrome integration is not nearly as good, but it's an alternative you can make do with, especially on an Android device where it works best. I've gone from WTFWHATAMIGONNADONOW to only missing Google Reader a little.

I don't care who will do it, but whoever will be successful with that will need an API for that for third-party apps to plug in to. And with this comes the total loss of any ad revenue. And this will kill it for everyone who lacks a really good business plan that doesn't depend on ads.

You know, the hole Google Reader will leave behind is shaped like a sync service. It doesn't look like a web app at all. It's all the third-party apps that were riding on it that will cry for something to fill that hole.

Many people and even companies are failing to understand this.

The best proposal I have heard of is to take the Google Reader API and add a field for a server. Just that. And then have apps using that API offer a setting to enter a server. This way you could have lots of companies offer servers for that protocol (free or for money) and all clients supporting that API would support all of them. As in a free market on the free Internet. Shocking, yes. But it might just work!

I've tried Feedly and NetVibes so far and both have had pretty horrible UIs. Neither of which border on the simplicity and obviousness of Google Reader.

Feedly requires a plugin, so no use for corporate environments and the settings button doesn't do anything on Firefox ESR. Netvibes has a ghastly design (kitchen sink anyone?) and, I'm embarrassed to say, after. 5 minutes I still couldn't work out how to delete the default feeds they gave me and supply my own.

I'm hoping for Digg, because the competition isn't cutting it at the moment.

Heavens! Implement the Google Reader API with a server setting. Offer a free server for that for up to 5 or 10 feeds or so and have people pay for more. All third-party app devs will jump on that and modify their apps to configure a server. Problem solved, move on to more interesting problems.

Sometimes it pays to be patient. Developers are people just like you and me and filling the G-hole takes time. It's been a relatively short period of time since the GoogleReader countdown to destruction.

You should remember that this Digg isn't the Old Digg, it's a brand new company, they just bought the name for the recognition.

Yeah but you really can't feel sorry for the recognition they get. Negative or positive they've gotten just what what they paid for. If they wanted a clean break they should not have acquired something that clearly wasn't a clean break.

My favorite thing about Google Reader is that it doesn't “add value to the sources of information” by integrating services like Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, reddit, and LinkedIn. Not sure what I am going to do but so far I think I can rule out Digg and Feedly. I may just roll my own.

I could never find enough sites to visit to justify managing a RSS feed.

I never knew people killed so much about it until Google killed reader. So either it wasn't as popular as people believed or google reader did its job so well people never thought Google would kill it.

People were using RSS long before Google Reader. Google Reader is mainly a sync service used by hundreds of apps (Ars, care to count them? Please!) to sync your read and starred articles over several devices and platforms.

And what's so hard about finding RSS feeds to read? Judging from the fact that you read Ars, you could subscribe to Ars, Anandtech, Wired, The Verge, Salon, The Guardian and The Register. If you like Ars, you will find plenty of exciting stuff to read in what you get then. And whenever you run into a site you like, look for an "RSS" icon and subscribe to it for a while. It's like your very own TV channel.

I guess social integration is fine, and apparently a lot of people want it. I can certainly see the value of that for journalists and industry watchers, and in certain other situations. But they'd better make it so that it can be completely hidden or very easily ignored. It's far too easy to fill a page with that crap and to let it overwhelm the actual content - you know, the feeds; the news.

I also worry about curation, which in any form is sort of the antithesis of RSS, and Google Reader. I have no problem with a separate page somewhere for "recommendations", special sections (tech, science, quilting, "most popular") and the like (Google did a bit of that, but it wasn't too obnoxious), but that needs to be completely out of the way during normal, daily use. The beauty of Google Reader, or any decent RSS reader, is that you find the sources, plug them in, and ... well, read them. Without all of that crap. Without any of that crap, in fact. Can or will Digg do that? Their site doesn't really suggest that.

Sometimes it pays to be patient. Developers are people just like you and me and filling the G-hole takes time. It's been a relatively short period of time since the GoogleReader countdown to destruction.

I agree that it's good news, but only if you don't spend a significant portion of your feed-reading time on a public computer. (Now if NNW would implement a web interface to read in this case, that would be perfect. Their push for local-installed apps, however, makes me think this won't happen.) In any case, you're right—someone, somewhere has to fill the hole.

I guess social integration is fine, and apparently a lot of people want it. I can certainly see the value of that for journalists and industry watchers, and in certain other situations. But they'd better make it so that it can be completely hidden or very easily ignored. It's far too easy to fill a page with that crap and to let it overwhelm the actual content - you know, the feeds; the news.

I also worry about curation, which in any form is sort of the antithesis of RSS, and Google Reader. I have no problem with a separate page somewhere for "recommendations", special sections (tech, science, quilting, "most popular") and the like (Google did a bit of that, but it wasn't too obnoxious), but that needs to be completely out of the way during normal, daily use. The beauty of Google Reader, or any decent RSS reader, is that you find the sources, plug them in, and ... well, read them. Without all of that crap. Without any of that crap, in fact. Can or will Digg do that? Their site doesn't really suggest that.

On the other hand, with only yourself and what you find you easily broil in your very own broth. Which can get quite boring after a while. I quite like the "Cover Stories" of FlipBoard which offer a section of the stuff people share a lot. This gives you a bit of a view outside of your bubble (although it certainly is weighted after what you subscribe to), but if you want you can ignore it and just read the feeds you subscribed to yourself.

I definitely like some way to be nudged towards what other people think of as read-worthy. After all there MUST be a way to find new things or you would be reading the same old stuff for all eternity and you would still be stuck with Slashdot (which I still subscribe to, but more for the top 1% cream of comments than the actual content).

Having said that, Googles "sort by magic" essentially ordered all the posts by the number of reads, stars and shared by other people - and that was a nice way to quickly read a feed in some sort of useful order when you had too many unread messages.

I've tried feedly, unfortunately it sucks. It requires a Chrome plugin for absolutely no reason to function, forcing me to give it "access to data on all websites." How about just a website, feedly? The UI is a mess and provides ten different ways to lay things out, none of which are quite perfect. The Android app has its own UI unique from the website with its own layout options, several of which don't even get respected after choosing them. The "swipe to mark read" mechanics are buggy as hell. I've given up on it.

I guess social integration is fine, and apparently a lot of people want it. I can certainly see the value of that for journalists and industry watchers, and in certain other situations. But they'd better make it so that it can be completely hidden or very easily ignored. It's far too easy to fill a page with that crap and to let it overwhelm the actual content - you know, the feeds; the news.

I also worry about curation, which in any form is sort of the antithesis of RSS, and Google Reader. I have no problem with a separate page somewhere for "recommendations", special sections (tech, science, quilting, "most popular") and the like (Google did a bit of that, but it wasn't too obnoxious), but that needs to be completely out of the way during normal, daily use. The beauty of Google Reader, or any decent RSS reader, is that you find the sources, plug them in, and ... well, read them. Without all of that crap. Without any of that crap, in fact. Can or will Digg do that? Their site doesn't really suggest that.

On the other hand, with only yourself and what you find you easily broil in your very own broth. Which can get quite boring after a while. I quite like the "Cover Stories" of FlipBoard which offer a section of the stuff people share a lot. This gives you a bit of a view outside of your bubble (although it certainly is weighted after what you subscribe to), but if you want you can ignore it and just read the feeds you subscribed to yourself.

I definitely like some way to be nudged towards what other people think of as read-worthy. After all there MUST be a way to find new things or you would be reading the same old stuff for all eternity and you would still be stuck with Slashdot (which I still subscribe to, but more for the top 1% cream of comments than the actual content).

Good points, and I agree. That's why I wouldn't mind if they had a page or a section for that, somewhere. A button or a link at the bottom (preferred) of the main index, or at the bottom of a sidebar. No matter. Just not in my face full time.

All I want from an RSS service is an API for syncing. If that service wants to inject ads into my feeds in order to pay for itself, I'm down with that, or alternatively they could ask me to pay 50 quid a year and I'd be happy to do that instead.

It took me a little while to get used to Feedly (I'm one of the "500,000 new members", apparently) and to set it up closer to Reader. I like its "suggestion" features, and I've found some nice new feeds that way.

Digg? No thanks. If I want to share an article with friends, I already have lots of options to do that. The very last thing I want it "social integration" for my news.

The reason I started using Google Reader (in fact the reason I started using RSS) is because of how the interface is quite unobtrusive. Quite different to Feedly which is all up in your face as if the content is secondary or the experience is somehow made better when you have more interface in the way of what you want. The RSS apps before that were like trying to read news in an email client, and a lot of them still feel that way.

Feedly is also slow, I find myself having to slow down compared to what I'm used to as far as scrolling through feed. When you have a lot of feeds, like most folks who rely on RSS do, you have to go through it VERY fast otherwise you'll waste away more of your life than necessary.

I'll use feedly if it comes down to that, I mean.... I guess I will. But it's going to feel like a seriously degraded way of doing things. And for the LOVE OF GOD why can't it fill my screen?

I've been trying Feedly... have it set on "titles" for my feeds, so it kinda-sorta looks like Reader; though I'd gladly replace its pretty typography with a simple "open in background tab" function (I know I can do that by right-clicking but I don't want to have to, dammit!) And I miss having all sorts of extensions to change the look and streamline things further. .... But it syncs for Chrome and Android, and otherwise works, so it's my first fall-back position.

...I also tried to import my feeds into The Old Reader, since they seemed to have a decent concept going and folks seemed to like it... that was a while ago; there used to be an indicator showing 40-something-thousand people ahead of me in the import queue, and later that showed 20-thousand-something, but now that's been replaced by "all available slots are busy." I think that means my OPML has been eaten by snakes. Oh, dear.

On the other hand, with only yourself and what you find you easily broil in your very own broth. Which can get quite boring after a while. I quite like the "Cover Stories" of FlipBoard which offer a section of the stuff people share a lot. This gives you a bit of a view outside of your bubble (although it certainly is weighted after what you subscribe to), but if you want you can ignore it and just read the feeds you subscribed to yourself.

Totally agreed. I think Flipboard handles it just right - the social integration and curated content is there if I want it, but I can totally ignore it and just dive right into my feeds too. Really wish they'd release a web reader.

On the other hand, with only yourself and what you find you easily broil in your very own broth. Which can get quite boring after a while. I quite like the "Cover Stories" of FlipBoard which offer a section of the stuff people share a lot. This gives you a bit of a view outside of your bubble (although it certainly is weighted after what you subscribe to), but if you want you can ignore it and just read the feeds you subscribed to yourself.

Totally agreed. I think Flipboard handles it just right - the social integration and curated content is there if I want it, but I can totally ignore it and just dive right into my feeds too. Really wish they'd release a web reader.

In fact if you have a Flipboard account you can continue to use your feeds directly over Flipboard even when Google Reader stops to exist (Flipboard can use Google Reader, but doesn't need it to sync RSS state across apps using the same account). If they would come with a web reader and/or a desktop client they could easily just take over a huge chunk of all Google Reader users.

But I still hope the devs can agree on just continue to use the Google Reader API they all support anyway and add a server choice to it so you can point clients to another server. Of course someone needs to run servers and get payed for it one way or another.

I have used 24Update.com for some time now and it serves my needs. It's nothing like Google Reader but it is simply showing the latest news from most news sources and there is no registration or anything. Check it out.

Netvibes for the win. Played with Feedly -- it's cute, but Netvibes saw me crying and offered me a handkerchief and a place to rest my weary RSS feet. I use it through a browser on S3, Transformer Infinity, and iPad. I have yet to look back.

"Value added" services, in my experience, tend to be like answers to questions I didn't ask. I have no interest in combining social media with my news feeds because quite frankly, social media updates aren't news.

It doesn't matter how good a replacement software title is, or how quickly it appears, A LOT of people have discovered the joy of whining and will not stop. Extended adolescence has advantages and disadvantages for a culture.